


Party of Two Centuries

by Para



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, OT3 is assumed but sufficiently out of focus that you can read it as platonic if you'd like, and many other characters making cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Para/pseuds/Para
Summary: It is December 30th, 1899.  The Other was defeated and Mechanicsburg unfrozen some months ago.  Now Europa is trying to sort out a precarious if hopeful balance between the overlapping networks and allegiances to the Storm King and the Wulfenbach Empire.More importantly, Grandma Terebithia still has claim to having hosted the best party of the century.  And that's a thing that Tarvek and Violetta absolutely can't allow to stand.





	Party of Two Centuries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shavynel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shavynel/gifts).



> For once I think I actually wrote a fic which doesn't require warnings; I'm not sure if this is a miracle or just unnerving.
> 
> This came mainly from the prompt "Violetta finally gets to wear a pretty dress," and a bit from "Tarvek and Gil resolve that Storm King vs Baron thing." They didn't get quite as much focus as I'd hoped, but hopefully it's still enjoyable.
> 
> Happy holidays to shavynel! (And to the rest of the fandom as well.)
> 
> Thanks to [Sword_Kallya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sword_Kallya/pseuds/Sword_Kallya) for a very thorough last minute beta reading!

“Dual monarchies _never work_ ,” Tarvek complained as he straightened Gil’s waistcoat. “Every attempt has been an _utter disaster_ , and besides which, it’s much too late to change plans _now_.”

“Sounds like a challenge,” Gil said. Violetta stepped silently between rafters, basket in hand, toward where both men were standing beside a full-body mirror. The mirror, at the moment, was serving primarily as a coat rack.

“It is not a challenge, it is a _historical fact_ —”

“There’s always a king and queen,” Gil said cheerfully, and sidestepped Tarvek’s attempt to straighten the cuffs of his shirt. Violetta took the last few steps and crouched on the rafter above them, tucking her skirts behind her so she could see them.

“Because only one actually _rules_ ,” Tarvek said. “The other is a consort—”

“Are you volunteering?”

“Certainly not,” Tarvek sniffed. “Let you rule alone? I don’t trust you to refrain from working yourself to death as it is.”

“If only you had as much concern for my hair—that pulls, you wasp eater—”

“How did you even _get_ this many tangles into your hair? It should be far too short.”

“Hm—some sort of space manipulation? If we can manipulate time….”

“That doesn’t _prove_ we can manipulate space, but I suppose if anyone’s hair were likely to warp space for the sheer sake of _causing me problems_ —”

That was enough. Violetta upended her basket, and glittering red dust compressed into the shape of rose petals floated down.

Tarvek, of course, immediately dragged Gil several steps back so they were out from under Violetta before the petals were even halfway to the floor. He frowned up at Violetta. “Did you have a _purpose_ , or was that purely for your entertainment?”

The petals burst into a pool of glittering red dust with a faint scent of copper as soon as they touched the ground, and Violetta dropped down after them. The glitter would be all over the bottom of her shoes and hem of her skirt, but that had been planned for. “Time’s up! The party’s ready to start and you’re the only ones not ready yet, now hurry up.”

Gil frowned at the walls. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Miss Violetta’s idea seemed much more amusing than anything I’m allowed to do tonight,” the Castle replied.

Tarvek nudged Gil’s shoulder until he turned away, and resumed brushing his hair. “We’ll be down as soon as this oaf is presentable.”

“We could just say tangled hair is a Skifandran fashion. It might even be true.”

“No one will _ask_ , now hold still.”

Violetta threw her bucket at Tarvek. Gil caught it without turning his head, and Violetta rolled her eyes. “Presentable or not, hurry up! You’re keeping my lady waiting.”

“Go entertain her, then,” Tarvek said. He didn’t look away from Gil’s hair. “Some suspense will be good for the guests.”

“Hurry up,” Violetta repeated. “Castle, can you make us a shortcut?”

“Certainly.”

Castle Heterodyne’s idea of a shortcut was a steep, spiraling, barely-lit almost-staircase of stone blocks, which Violetta hopped down while leaving a trail of red shoe prints and smears from her skirt. The stones ground together around her, echoing up and down the staircase and out the small door that let her out into a room full of unoccupied guests.

The room was large and open like a ballroom, with huge glass windows taking up most of the walls. Since the sun had set well before any of the guests were invited to arrive, the windows only gave them a view out over the town, the torchmen that lit the streets—occasionally by swooping over them—and the more normal torches that lit the path up to the castle.

Normal apart from being shaped like skulls, anyway. Violetta had gotten used to that. Most of the guests were the assorted rulers, powerful sparks, and other influential people from across Europa, and so wouldn’t be used to it at all.

The floor was polished, dark red stone, and the only light source was candles protected by small glass globes and set on the floor. The guests milled around, most of them talking in hushed voices. Garlands of holly and pine and mimmoth skulls hung from the ceiling.

Violetta didn’t talk to anyone as she crossed the floor, but she let her skirt and its red glitter trail pass through the light of a few candles, and heard a startled “oh!” from several people as she passed. That’d add a decent bit to the suspense.

Not that the suspense seemed to be working on everyone; Violetta could hear Albia and Colette speaking to each other in a blend of French and English and sounding quietly amused. Queen Zantabraxus was the only one talking loudly in cheerful Skifandran, and getting an occasional resigned-sounding response from Klaus Wulfenbach.

The stone ground together again when Violetta reached the wall opposite the entrance, and split open just long enough for her to duck inside before snapping shut behind her. As soon as it closed lights flicked on around her, and the Castle opened another doorway in the right wall with more grinding. 

Violetta squinted, adjusted her eyes to the light, and crossed to the new doorway. “You don’t have to keep doing that when they can’t see anything moving, Castle.”

“Some noise in the distance adds to the proper atmosphere,” Castle Heterodyne said.

“And the grinding is better than screams,” Agatha added from the next room.

Agatha was sitting in the center of a short green sofa, the skirts of her acid green and black dress spread out on either side of her to keep them from getting wrinkled and gold jewelry glittering in the abundant firelight. She was leaning forward over a small end table that was now covered in at least two layers of paper and sketches of what looked like Mechanicsburg’s walls. The lightning stick that Tarvek had made to be a more elegant version of Gil’s original was balanced on her lap, and looked like it was about to fall and shatter all the little glass bits Tarvek had added to glow when it was used.

Violetta crossed to the couch and snatched the lightning stick up, then waved it in front of Agatha’s nose. “And what are you going to do if this falls and breaks, my lady?”

Agatha leaned back, eyes briefly crossing as she watched the stick, then uncrossing as she looked up at Violetta. “Fix it?”

“You don’t have time!”

“Get Castle to do the lighting?” Agatha suggested.

“That’s not the right sort of impressive,” Violetta said. “We want people to be impressed by _you_ , not the Castle.”

Agatha reached up like she was about to push her hair back, then adjusted her glasses instead. “It’s my Castle.”

“And it can’t leave Mechanicsburg.”

“Well,” the Castle said. “If the lady were to—”

“No,” Violetta and Agatha said together.

“You have one little clank already,” Agatha said. “Where _is_ it, anyway? And the Beast?”

Stones shifted, more like a clearing throat than the ominous rumbling the Castle had indulged in the rest of the day. “They are _assisting_ the Queen clank in some minor repairs to a torchman.”

Violetta hid a grin behind her sleeve. The Castle and Beast clanks had been just as unable to resist the little Queen clank’s gifted spark as any of the other little clanks, despite their distaste for following orders from anyone but Agatha. They’d spent a few months trying to avoid her, and Queenie had gotten faster and faster at tracking them down when she wanted their help for a repair job. Beast and the Castle clank had eventually decided that Queenie was a sort of general which Agatha had built just for them, and that such a thing was an honor they couldn’t possibly refuse. The main Castle seemed to still have more mixed feelings on the topic.

More stones rumbled and a doorway opened in the back wall as Agatha nodded, and raised her voice to speak over them. “Do we need the torchman? I could fix it while we wait.”

“No need,” Tarvek said as he stepped through the doorway. “One torch more or less shouldn’t be noticeable.” He stepped gracefully down from one of the big stone blocks the Castle liked to pretend were stairs and into the room, head up as if he were already planning how to sweep elegantly through the entire party. Gil hopped down after him, grinning. They both left shining red footprints.

Tarvek was wearing purple, black and gold, with tiny fleur-de-lis patterned on his waistcoat and peeking out of his jacket. Gil was in blue, black and copper, eschewing the waistcoat for a long, sleeveless jacket that almost looked more like a cape and which Zeetha had sworn was in style in Skifander. Whether it was or not people would believe it, since half of the copper in Gil’s outfit was in the form of a Skifandran emotive circlet and armbands.

“Is everything ready?” Agatha asked.

“We are,” Tarvek said. Gil reached up toward the circlet he was wearing, and Tarvek pulled his arm back down. “ _Stop_ that, you’ll mess it up _again_. You need to at least wait until everyone has had a drink.”

“I wouldn’t think anyone is expecting me to be perfectly dressed.”

“We’ve already accounted for that, and—”

“Boys,” Agatha said, and they both shut up and turned to face her.

Agatha, instead, looked at Violetta. “What about the guests?”

“Ready and waiting, my lady.” Violetta waved the lightning stick, gesturing toward the wall that separated them from the dark ballroom full of guests. “Albia’s not intimidated—”

“Well, we didn’t expect her to be,” Agatha said.

“Would’ve been nice,” Tarvek muttered.

“—and neither is Colette or any of the Skifandrans,” Violetta finished. “But everyone else was whispering.”

Agatha nodded. “Right, we’re ready then. Castle, if you could get the table?”

The stones in front of Agatha shifted with more loud rumbling, and the one holding the end table rose up, floated to the side, and sank back down at the end of the couch. Another stone immediately rose to fill in the gap in front of Agatha. Violetta passed the lightning stick back once she was standing, and turned to slip back into the side room as the three arranged themselves in front of the wall.

The passage to the side room closed, the lights went out, and the wall to the ballroom opened—for once, with only the barest whisper of moving stone. Violetta slipped out into the crowd, still leaving shining red streaks in the pools of candlelight as she passed, and made her way to the back right corner of the room.

As soon as she was in place Castle Heterodyne started rumbling again, first distantly, then louder and louder until it culminated in a crack of stones as the back wall split. Firelight spilled out, silhouetting Agatha with the lightning stick in her hand, and Tarvek and Gil on either side of her.

Agatha’s voice boomed when she spoke. “Welcome, everyone! We’re flattered by your attendance and hope that you will enjoy this momentous evening. Now—” She raised her arm and the lightning stick crackled. “Let the party begin!”

Lightning shot from the stick up to the center of the ceiling, and—seemingly—spread. It was actually a series of gas-filled glass tubes which lit up the same blue-white as lightning when electricity went through them, and the lightning strike was just the signal to the Castle to turn them on. The lights spiralled jaggedly out from the center across the ceiling until they spread over all of it like a whirlpool. A few branches stretched out over Violetta’s head to light the corner and the previously hidden hallway there.

It was still a little dim compared to daylight, but there was enough light to show Tarvek’s politely pleased smile, Gil’s wider, toothier grin, and Agatha’s bright, friendly smile as she rested the lightning stick on her shoulder. Her voice didn’t quite boom, but the Castle still projected it over the room. “Now, I believe that this room isn’t quite cut out for dancing, so shall we proceed to the next? Ah, thank you, Castle,” she added as a trio of mechanical horses emerged from the same room Agatha had, metal hooves somehow making no noise on the stone.

Gil helped Agatha onto her horse, then vaulted onto his own as Tarvek swung himself into the seat of the third. Agatha sat rigidly upright as she adjusted her skirts, her expression luckily disguised by the room’s odd lighting. She raised her arm again, pointing toward the hallway behind Violetta with the lightning stick as she urged the horse into motion.

The horse tossed its head, but went with no other sign of objection, and Violetta breathed a sigh of relief. Tarvek and Agatha had spent days making the mechanical horses act as much like real horses as they could, only to realize that Agatha didn’t know how to ride any sort of horse. They left finishing the horses to Gil and some Mechanicsburg sparks while Tarvek tried to give Agatha a crash course in horse riding. (The only horse they’d been able to find for the lessons had, of course, been a jäger horse. Violetta supposed that at least the mechanical horses wouldn’t be crazier, though they also wouldn’t respond so well to Agatha’s scent.)

Agatha paused when she reached the corner and pointed the lightning stick toward the ceiling of the hall. Another bolt of lightning hit, and triggered another cascade of blue-white lightning tube lights along the ceiling. She started the horse walking again with a cheerful “follow me!” Tarvek and Gil followed behind her, Tarvek’s posture still casually perfect and Gil’s balanced as if he expected and kind of hoped the horse would try to throw him off.

Violetta slipped in behind them with a sigh of relief. If the horses did anything embarrassing now, she was in a position to distract the guests from seeing.

And to leave yet another trail of red glitter. The hallway amplified sound, echoing the sound of footsteps, rustling fabric, and excited or nervous whispers up and down the hall as the guests made their way through the apparently seamless stone. A man asked, “is that blood?” just loud enough for Violetta to make out the words.

“It can’t be,” a woman answered. “Right? It’s a party, even if it is… Mechanicsburg.”

The hallway curved around the outside of the Castle just long enough to let people start wondering exactly how long the walk would be before they spilled out into the next room. It was unlit, with only a little bit of light spilling into it from the lightning tubes in the hallway.

Agatha, Tarvek and Gil dismounted their horses and sent them off into the dark parts of the room, where minions were waiting to take them and lead them back to the mechanical lab. That was most of Violetta’s work for the evening done; she’d keep an eye on Agatha just in case, but she had no other specific assignments for the evening that weren’t shared with every Mechanicsburger attending. She slipped to the side of the room and stood by the wall, where she was in shadow but could see as much as possible of the crowd of guests. She ran her hands over her own skirts again while the darkness would still hide her pleased expression. They weren’t nearly as elaborate as Agatha’s—which Violetta was quite glad for; she didn’t want to try moving in the many layers that Agatha had on just now—but they were a lovely pale lavender silk with gold details. And her dress was _just_ a dress. She had weapons and poison and antidotes all hidden underneath it, but she’d smacked Tarvek several times while he designed its to make sure there wasn’t any of that in the dress itself.

Tarvek started a conversation with Gil and Agatha, at least partly for the effect of their casual conversation and occasional laughter. Violetta listened in for a moment, heard nothing but reminiscing over the cheese mimmoth incident from last New Year’s Eve, and started listening in on the crowd instead.

Albia and Queen Zantabraxus were the loudest voices, cheerfully exchanging stories of Albia’s memories and Zantabraxus’s legends of Queen Luheia. Zeetha was talking with Larana and Jim, catching up on what each of them had been doing since the Other was defeated and Mechanicsburg was freed from the timestop. Zeetha’s stories mostly involved family reunions; Larana and Jim’s stories mostly involved explosions.

Klaus Wulfenbach wasn’t saying anything, but Violetta could track his location in the crowd by the surprised, confused, and scandalized whispers of everyone who saw him. He was in traditional Skifandran dress, which meant the same loose, sleeveless jacket as Gil, over Skifandrian formal clothes, which would have been better categorized as elaborate jewelry.

Violetta wondered if that idea had been Klaus’s, Zantabraxus’s, or Zeetha’s. Whoever had come up with it, it would discourage anyone who might have been inclined to encourage Klaus to reestablish his empire, so Violetta approved.

Colette slipped out of the crowd to lean against the wall next to Violetta. She was easy to see, wearing a bright yellow gown in complete defiance of the season. “Interesting way to start a party.”

“Well, we couldn’t have it be boring.” Violetta brushed a hand over her skirt again. “Grandma’s still hosted the best party this century, we’ve got to make this one better.”

“Competitive parties?” Colette laughed. “I should have known, with Tarvek involved. I look forward to seeing what you came up with, then.”

Stone slammed closed over the doorway from the hall, sealing the room shut and plunging it into total darkness. Several people gasped, a few screamed.

The lightning stick crackled as Agatha raised it again, and a bolt shot up to the ceiling. It struck, producing the same spiralling lightning effect, but this time it reached and lit dozens of huge chandeliers. Not one chandelier was the same, and all of them had varying amounts of skulls, bones, and red liquid trapped in crystals involved in their design, but they bathed the room in the first properly bright light of the evening. That caused more startled gasps, as it revealed the two or three dozen jägers that had been among the crowd, all grinning widely.

“A mechanical orchestra to provide our entertainment, designed by Baron Wulfenbach and Prince of Skifander Gilgamesh Wulfenbach!” Agatha announced. “And drinks designed by Storm King and Prince of Sturmhalten, Tarvek Sturmvoraus!”

On one side of the room was a mechanical orchestra, about two pieces of which had been transferred from Castle Wulfenbach before Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek dove into “improvements” on the whole thing. Now all of the clanks could stand, walk, and run on their own, several backups stood to the side of the orchestra, and each one wore a hat on its head and a sword by its side.

On the other side of the room was a long table of light snacks, most of them snail-based, and twenty five assorted minions and constructs holding trays with drinks. The drinks were all different colors, each one indicating a different flavor. All of them had been given a very light dose of a chemical blend Tarvek had designed for the evening. The drinks would give the guests a little bit more energy to counter the late night, and turn nervousness into anticipation. The sole exception was Zoing, who wore a top hat on top of his usual orange one and pushed a mechanical cart that held cream, sugar, tea cups, saucers, tea leaves, and a boiler which Agatha had promised Zoing with utmost seriousness would produce water at the exact, perfect temperature for tea.

“Not what I expected,” Colette said.

“Hyu chust vait und see, sveethot,” a nearby jäger said.

Another, smaller bolt of lightning to the base that the mechanical orchestra was standing on started them playing. The minions and Zoing began approaching the guests with drinks.

It took a few minutes, but Queen Zantabraxus dragged Klaus into the middle of the floor for a dance that didn’t remotely match the music, and more guests trickled over to begin dancing after (though well clear of) them. Others drifted to the tables, accepted drinks, or began chatting.

Violetta danced with Colette—certainly not how she’d planned to start the evening, dancing with the Master of Paris, but it was fun. Colette tried to fish for information about what was planned for the rest of the party (“This seems a bit understated, if you’re trying to compete with Lady Terebithia.”) and Violetta gave the most elaborate answers she could without including any actually relevant information. Then she danced with a boy who introduced himself as Eustache Glassvitch (“My parents are the tyrants of Beetleburg now—my father runs the university and my mother does everything else.”) and then the Mole King (“Ah, as lovely as ever I see, Lady Mondarev! I don’t believe you met my wife, did you? We’ll have to find her after this dance.”), and that was when the first jäger snatched a hat off one of the orchestra clanks and leapt away.

The rest of the clanks kept playing; the one whose hat had been stolen, a cat, handed its flute to a backup clank which took its place, and drew its sword, all in jerky movements. Then it launched across the floor after the jäger, its movements suddenly more reminiscent of Zeetha.

The jäger bolted across the floor. “Hy thought they dun moof like dot!”

“They do now!” Gil called from somewhere near the refreshments table.

The cat clank continued chasing the jäger as Violetta met the Mole Queen, and the pair eventually descended into a sword fight that occasionally bounced over the guests and off the walls. A show more than a true fight, the swords flashing and clanging and doing very little to actually defeat or disarm the other. This only encouraged the other jägers, and soon half a dozen pairs of clanks and jägers were bouncing around the room. The clanks returned to the orchestra when they either retrieved their hat, or stole the jäger’s. In either case, the jägers immediately resumed attempts to steal a hat, so soon enough most of the orchestra was chasing jägers around the room, while the few left played quick dance music that the duelling clanks almost seemed to move in time to.

The guests had been startled at first; there were a few shrieks as clanks and jägers leapt overhead, a few dropped glasses, and several shocked and scandalized glances in Agatha’s direction. But Agatha ignored the reactions; she continued dancing or talking as if nothing were unusual. As time passed and no one was hurt, Tarvek’s drinks took effect and the guests began to view the jägers as entertainment. Most laughed, some applauded when a clank or jäger pulled off an especially showy move, others placed bets, and a few even got involved, tossing hats around to get them to or keep them away from the clanks.

An hour after the party began no one was dancing, but everyone was cheerful. In contrast, the sole remaining clank—an otter—played the slowest, most mournful thing Violetta had ever heard from a violin until it too lost its hat to a jäger, and abandoned its instrument to give chase.

Agatha’s voice projected over the room again. “Alright, I think we’ve lost this room!” she called. “Let’s move on, shall we? If you’d open the next door, Castle.”

The Castle rumbled, the wall split open, and Agatha used the lightning stick to turn on the lightning rods that ran along it again. This time, though, there was laughter and chatter as people followed Agatha, Tarvek and Gil through the hallway and into the next room.

Agatha lit the next room quickly, before the last guests had even reached it. When they had all trickled in and the Castle shut the wall behind them she was already beaming. “And now it’s time for _cake_! Don’t worry, they only look like snails. Every table is a different flavor, so try as many as you like! Except for gingerbread, that is; it’s a bit of a Mechanicsburg tradition so we have a few tables of those.”

The room was full of small tables, each no more than an arm’s length across, and each one held nearly a hundred bite-sized cakes, shaped and decorated to look like snails. Violetta tried grape, vanilla, gingerbread, nutmeg, chocolate mimmoth, and what she was fairly sure was a spiced apricot cake before settling by the cinnamon table. A young art spark, who apparently knew Gil from his Castle Wulfenbach days, joined her and complimented her dress, then composed a poem on the spot about how Violetta’s dress was the loveliest flower on the earth. His minion looked resignedly amused beside him, and Violetta hid her snickers and memorized the poem.

It went on like that for the rest of the night. Castle Heterodyne’s ability to reshape itself was one of their major advantages over Grandma in planning the party, and so they’d taken full advantage. The Castle had rearranged itself entirely for the party and so they spiralled up and around from room to room, spending only twenty or thirty minutes in most. A room with a clank that would roast marshmallows and present them to anyone who stood in the correct spot, another room for dancing where the floor was made of clear glass filled with jewels and the light came from below, a room with a drink machine that could make anything anyone asked for (operated by Moloch, who had been bribed with permission to make himself whatever drinks he wanted as soon as the party had gone through, and Moloch had ensured that Vanamonde continued with the party and didn’t stay to drink coffee). Some rooms they merely passed through: a room lined with dancing clanks made to look like skeletons, a room full of the armor worn by old Heterodynes and their consorts, and the library, where jägers reappeared to quite casually surround the guests and prevent anyone from getting within arm’s reach of a book. A room with tables of decorated, skull-shaped gingerbread, a room with constructs each presenting the flavor of savory pastry that tasted best to them (ranging from potato and cheese, to bugs, to copper dust).

In each room bones, skulls, and trilobites became more prominent, and the guests kept drinking Tarvek’s concoction. Castle Heterodyne rumbled ominously, and as they moved through the rooms some of the guests began clapping in response. By the time they reached the final room the guests were buzzing with the same energy that Mechanicsburgers did right after Agatha announced “I have an idea!” and began giving orders.

The final hallway spiralled up, and the guests emerged onto the roof of Castle Heterodyne in predawn gray. Torches were still burning throughout the town, and slightly larger fires burned in the center of every crossroads. More torches had been put up on the roof, surrounding the flat section holding the guests, and ensuring that they had enough light to watch their footing. Even if someone did slip in the light dusting of snow, there were walls to keep them from falling anywhere.

Agatha climbed onto a large, flat stone, about four meters long, and Gil and Tarvek followed to stand on either side. The Castle raised the dais until they were high enough for the first rays of weak sunlight to wash over their faces, stopping when Tarvek subtly tapped a heel on the stone.

Tarvek stepped forward first. “The Other is gone,” he announced. “As everyone here is both aware of and relieved by, I’m certain. In the last several months, we have seen that we are left with, yes, many losses, but also some gains: a stronger network of alliances than our predecessors had, and a hope that we can build this current peace into one which will last beyond our lifetimes. The difficulty, of course—”

“—is that we have two competing empires,” Gil said, stepping forward as well. “And while we, in this generation, are committed to working together, we must consider the unfortunate chance that this may not be the case in the future. We must also consider that in the present, the Wulfenbach and the Storm King empires overlap each other’s territory in a way that makes jurisdiction quite complicated, and therefore delays any important work that should be done.”

“I, Tarvek Sturmvoraus, as the Storm King—”

“—and I, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, as the Baron of the Wulfenbach Empire—”

“—have decided upon a solution.”

Whispers swept through the guests. Tarvek and Gil turned, synchronized, and knelt in front of Agatha. It looked much smoother than the first time Tarvek had insisted on practicing the move, and Agatha maintained a dignified expression instead of giggling. Good. Violetta would have hated for this moment to be talked about because it went wrong.

Gil beamed up at Agatha. “As Baron and ruler of the Wulfenbach Empire, I hereby abdicate my position, and turn the empire and all associated duties, responsibilities, and power over to Lady Agatha Heterodyne.”

Tarvek had probably planned to keep his expression serious, Violetta guessed, but a small smile broke through anyway. “As Storm King of the Shining Empire, I hereby abdicate my position, and turn the empire and all associated duties, responsibilities, and power over to Lady Agatha Heterodyne.”

“I accept,” Agatha said. “Now rise.”

She took two steps forward as they did, until she was standing at the edge of the stone. “We do not intend for this to be a huge change to what we have established,” she said. “Those of you who ruled within an empire still will do so, and laws will not significantly change except where they differed between empires and must be reconciled. Those of you who were allies, we hope you will continue to be such. Details of any changes that may impact you will be written up and sent out tomorrow… or perhaps I should say, this afternoon,” she added with a glance toward where a sliver of the sun was peeking over the horizon. “There is, however, one _major_ issue we would like to address.”

Gil and Tarvek stepped forward again, until they were standing even with Agatha. “The issue of inheritance has caused repeated trouble to both the Wulfenbach Empire and the Shining Empire of the Storm King,” Tarvek said. “In order to prevent this problem from occurring again, we intend to implement a schooling system, available to all future rulers and talented children within the new Europan Empire. The Empire’s heir will be chosen from these students, according to merit; details will be included in the information distributed later today.”

“And now,” Agatha said, “since I know you’ve been waiting, Castle, go ahead.”

The doom bell rang. Cheering broke out immediately down in the streets, and only a few seconds later on the rooftop. Tarvek’s drinks had worked well; even after having limited what she drank and smoke knight training making her resistant to most chemicals, Violetta was filled with shivery, rising excitement that matched the dawn, like she could fight anything, do anything, like this was the first moment of something as grand as the universe.

**Author's Note:**

> Could real life rulers resolve a dilemma in anything remotely like this fashion? I doubt it. On the other hand: this is Europa. People are used to far crazier antics from ruling sparks than this.
> 
> Gil and Tarvek and Agatha all end up effectively co-ruling; Agatha is just the deciding voice when they can't agree. Gil gets involved with an empire-wide hospital system and transport and communication networks, and a sparky version of bioengineering crops to resist drought, pests, etc. (Probably also fire and acid, because sparks.) Tarvek tends to work more on the political and diplomatic side of things, and ends up working a lot with Jenka. A few choice hats of his end up stolen, then stolen back, then stolen again, and trade back and forth between the two of them for decades. Vanamonde cackles gleefully when no one is looking and plans how to use this to attract more tourists.
> 
> The whole party was aimed at supporting Agatha's role in the new empire: namely, the smart, charming woman holding the leash of all the scary things (including her own more Heterodyne tendencies). The party was meant to bring up all the things about Heterodynes and Mechanicsburg that would make people remember that, wait, _we really don't want to pick a fight with these people_. Tarvek's chemical drinks were meant to give ordinary, non-Mechanicsburg guests a feeling rather similar to what Mechanicsburgers experience when around Heterodynes and/or the doom bell, turning all the intimidation from 'oh god she's terrifying I hope she's not mad at me I'd better prepare in case she ever is' into 'I'm so glad she's on my side my side is AWESOME now!' It certainly won't solve all the political tensions, but it might smooth a few of them out a bit.
> 
> Also, Tarvek (with some assistance from Violetta, but mostly Tarvek) scripted and choreographed the entire party months ago, and then made everyone rehearse. Even the jagers. The jagers got to playfight about hats so they were okay with it. (And Tarvek was largely counting on the important empire-changing announcement plus the weirdness of it all to make this the most talked about party of, oh, ever in history would probably content him.)
> 
> I do wish I'd thought of more rooms, especially more ones that hit the balance of ominous and exciting/fun like the jagers vs orchestra room did. Sadly they did not emerge, but if you think of something that fits feel free to headcanon it in there.
> 
> The fires in the crossroads are a... new, Agatha-suggested variant of a Mechanicsburg tradition in which the people make sacrifices for the new year. In this version, they're burning small straw goats.


End file.
